José de Alencar’s Drama Mãe and the African-Brazilian ... · Mãe, de José de Alencar, que tem por cenário o Rio de Janeiro da segunda metade do séc. XIX, retratando a escravidão

182 Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, 14 (3): 182-207, July/Sept. 2019.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2176-457336669

José de Alencar’s Drama Mãe and the African-Brazilian Social Voices

/ A peça Mãe de Alencar e as vozes sociais sobre a questão afro-brasileira

Angela Maria Rubel Fanini*

Maria Domingos Pereira Ventura*

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the drama Mãe, written by Jose de Alencar. The narrative takes

place in Rio de Janeiro in the second half of nineteenth-century and portrays domestic

African slavery. The theoretical background is based on the ideas of Bakhtin and the

Circle, focusing on the social discourses about slavery in Brazilian society present in the

characters’ speeches. This investigation leads readers to perceive the positions on

slavery that society supported and that penetrate Mãe. Some historical discourses

written in the twentieth century are analyzed, offering a dialogical dimension to

Alencar’s play. The characters’ voices portray either their submission to slavery or their

autonomy, the latter representing their resistance to captivity. Reading this drama today

is important because of the slave culture that still prevails in our society.

KEYWORDS: Alencar’s drama; Social voices; Slave culture

RESUMO

Este artigo analisa a peça Mãe, de José de Alencar, que tem por cenário o Rio de

Janeiro da segunda metade do séc. XIX, retratando a escravidão africana doméstica.

Fundamenta-se nas ideias de Bakhtin e do Círculo, focalizando as vozes sociais sobre a

escravidão presentes nas falas das personagens. A investigação leva o leitor a perceber

os posicionamentos sobre a escravidão presentes no cotidiano nacional que migram para

o interior do drama alencariano. Também se mobilizaram discursos historiográficos do

século XX que estabelecem dialogia com a obra alencariana. As falas retratam as

personagens ora submetidas ao regime escravista, ora em situação autonômica,

representando a resistência ao cativeiro. A leitura da peça é importante para as gerações

atuais, visto que a cultura escravocrata perdura em nossa sociedade.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Teatro alencariano; Vozes sociais; Cultura escravocrata

* Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná - UTFPR; Programa de Pós-Graduação em Tecnologia e

Sociedade; Campus Universitário Andrade - UNIANDRADE; Programa de Pós-Graduação em Teoria

Literária, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil; CNPq Research Productivity Fellow; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-

7088-1251, [email protected]. ** Rede Estadual de Ensino do Estado do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3789-2458;

[email protected].

Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, 14 (3): 182-207, July/Sept. 2019. 183


Corpus Delimitation and Discursive Perspective

This article analyzes the reconstruction of social voices of nineteenth-century

Brazilian society in José de Alencar’s play Mãe,1 about the condition of the slaves.

Machado de Assis (1875)2 had already asserted that “every writer is a man of his time

and of his country.”3 Alencar’s plays reflect reality by staging what exists, yet in a

refracted manner, according to the worldview of the author and his generation, his

cultural and existential repertoire. Every discourse starts from a “chronotopic” situation,

a Bakhtinian concept that highlights the spatial and temporal coordinates of the

discursive subject. However, this does not imply that it is a photograph of the real ipsis

litteris. The connection of words with things is mediated because the speaker occupies a

unique place in the communication. The question of the subject is complex and the

materialist Philosophy of Language, to which this article refers, can elucidate it. In the

Bakhtinian perspective, the subject is intersubjective since it exists in dialog with the

other. It is founded on language, which is shared. Dialogism does not imply the erasure

of the singular because each subject occupies an unrepeatable axiological position.

Based on Bakhtin in his essay Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity (ca. 1920-1923):

Being is, as it were, once and for all, irrevocably, between myself as

the unique one and everyone else as others for me. [...] It is only from

my own unique place that the meaning of the ongoing event can

become clearer, and the more intensely I become rooted in that place,

the clearer that meaning becomes (1990, p.129).4

It is from this discursive perspective that Alencar’s corpus is examined. His

theatre speeches are historical and singular constructions, although they belong to a

social reality that can be shared. Albeit unique and irreproducible, every enunciative act

is double-voiced and dialogical as it constitutes a replica within a greater social dialog.

1 Citations from this work were taken from this reference: ALENCAR, José de. Mãe. Available from:

http:// www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/bi000161.pdf /. Accessed: November 16, 2014. 2 Machado de Assis deals with questions surrounding the local in the national literature and its universal

reach. 3 In the original: “todo escritor é homem de seu tempo e país.” 4 BAKHTIN, M. Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity. In: BAKHTIN, M. Art and Answerability: Early

Philosophical Essays. Edited by Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov; translated by Vadim Liapunov.

Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1990. pp.4-256.



Alencar finds himself in a dialog about slavery (that is tense, contradictory, aggressive,

libertarian, revolutionary), which is present in newspapers, legislative speeches, pulpits,

plantation houses, slave quarters, public notary documents, witness testimonies from

police stations, quilombos,5 prisons, abolitionist groups, international treaties, etc. It

should be emphasized that this article looks at the question of social voices and not that

of intertextuality. From the Bakhtinian viewpoint, the voices go beyond the texts, for

these, from a formalist perspective, lack context, referring to each other within an

immanent system. Indeed, the voices are socially situated and respond to concrete and

everyday issues. This specificity of Bakhtinian thinking relates to the materialist

Marxist tradition in which individuals make their history, although tied to concrete

conditions. Following Bakhtin (1992) in From Notes Made in 1970-71: “There can be

no such thing as an isolated utterance. It always presupposes utterances that precede and

follow it. No one utterance can be either the first or the last. Each is only a link in the

chain, and none can be studied outside this chain” (p.136).6 The characters embody the

everyday discourses in which either abolitionist or slavery apologist positions stand out.

This analysis recognizes that literature is composed of these real historical voices that

are organized by the author’s architectonics. We take literature as a source of

knowledge about reality and our common cultural baggage equips us with a specific

look at the nineteenth century that allows us to recognize certain discourses of that time.

It is with this background that the play is read, making these nineteenth-century voices

visible. Following Bakhtin, it is assumed that Alencar’s text is also dialogic since there

is no discourse without dialogy. In a familiar environment, the dramatic text allows the

speeches to be guided either by intimacy, when discursive subjects emerge, or by

hierarchy, reinforcing their distances.

2 The Many Voices of Slavery: Dialogism in Extensive Temporality

For centuries, slavery took place in the Brazilian national territory and much has

been written and said on the subject. Many voices spoke out about it. The Brazilian

5 TN: Fugitive and former slave settlements. 6 BAKHTIN, M. From Notes Made in 1970-71. In: BAKHTIN, M. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays.

Translated by Vern W. McGee; edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University

of Texas Press, 1986.pp.132-158.



historiography is extensive and conflicting, which is natural and congruent to the

Russian theorists’ perspective adopted herein, who emphasize the impossibility of a

unique discourse about a fact. Many are the sources from which the historiography of

the twentieth century departs. Public notary documents, legislative documents, religious

sermons, accounts from historians of the time, popular songs, newspapers and economic

treaties are all sources for historians. Moreover, from the standpoint of Cultural History,

literature has been an important contribution to the production of historical accounts.

Before moving to the analysis of Alencar’s play, some of these historical discourses

about the theme shall be outlined. It is not the aim of this investigation to dwell on them

in detail, but it is necessary to underline some discourses. Gorender (1990) provides an

extensive overview, on which this article is partly based to begin the synthesis

mentioned. From the Bakhtinian perspective, it is essential to emphasize these positions

in order to verify the dialog between our time and Alencar’s. It should be stressed that

there is no truer discourse. Indeed, the historiographic viewpoint is not taken as more

truthful than the fictional. In the humanities, every discourse is a social position, and its

heuristic value cannot be accurately measured. The literary discourse plays an important

role in the discussion of the facts as it privileges the everyday ideology,7 bringing real

life and its speeches to the scene. As Vološinov (1986) considers, everyday ideology

refers to the discursive ensemble present in the concrete relations that men and women

develop among each other, confronting ideas in the day-to-day of existence. Literature

is enriched by these speeches, formalizing them in its characters. In fact, literature can

be taken as the primary source, to a great extent, of these speeches since it is impossible

to rescue bygone voices in loco. However, the work may exceed its period. On the life

of a work in great temporality, we find in Bakhtin’s (1986) Response to a Question

from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff: “Enclosure within the epoch also makes it

impossible to understand the work's future life in subsequent centuries; this life appears

as a kind of paradox. Works break through the boundaries of their own time, they live in

centuries, that is, in great time” (p.4; emphasis in original).8 Thus, this article shall

7 In English, the term has been translated as “behavioral ideology” (p.91) in VOLOŠINOV, V. Marxism

and Philosophy of Language. Translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1986. 8 BAKHTIN, M. Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff. In: BAKHTIN, M. Speech

Genres and Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee; edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael

Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986, pp.1-9.



attempt to perceive the voices of the historical period of the play, while also examining

how the later voices can have a connection to the play, in a dialogic manner, which we

define as extensive.

The play Mãe takes place in the nineteenth century in an urban environment.

During this period, the debate between abolitionists and slavery apologists was a reality

in the public and private spheres. Alencar finds himself within this discursive situation

and responds to it. He transports these voices to the interior of the play and links them

to characters whose dramas are historically plausible. The nineteenth century saw the

increase in uprisings, insurrections and resistance of African-Brazilians against slavery.

There were many who fought, died and spoke out against the abominable statute. Thus,

it is impossible to recover all those actions and voices that contributed to the end of

slavery. However, literature formalizes and perpetuates these voices almost as a primary

source to which we allude. The literary source shall work as an archive that will be the

source of the discourses. The thesis that the abolition of slavery was only a concession

of the elites is no longer accepted. The actions of black resistance were constant and

achieved a considerable amount. In this article, we will analyze Alencar’s literary voice,

who observes the everyday life of a family from which he stages a slavery drama. The

playwright presents the slave to talk about himself and the resistance of enslaved people.

Due to the lack of space, this article will not discuss those voices documented in sources

other than literature. Nevertheless, reading much about the period dealt with herein, the

discourses of the characters are plausible and are very close to the everyday life

accounts of slaves that were already abundantly recorded in national historiography. We

do not overlook the valuable role played by abolitionist intellectuals such as Joaquim

Nabuco, André Rebouças, José do Patrocínio, Luiz Gama, Silva Jardim, Rui Barbosa,

and José Mariano, among others, regarding the end of slavery, since their actions were

decisive in its end. However, one cannot eradicate the struggle of the slaves and their

autonomy which contributed to abolition. Alencar represents this resistance in literature.

The slave had an autonomous role towards the conclusion of the

slavery crisis. Below the multiform propaganda, whose light was an

eye-opener to the intimate sense of iniquity, he constitutes the

dominant factor in the effort of redemption of himself. The captive’s

unwillingness, the glorious exodus of the slaves of São Paulo, solemn,

biblical, divine, like the most beautiful episodes of the sacred books,



was the definite disillusionment of the servile property among the

dubieties and tergiversations of the Empire (apud GORENDER, 1990,

p.182).9

The abolitionist and slavery apologist discourses from the elites penetrated

everyday life. Slaves were part of this setting. This common social horizon is

formalized in the characters’ speeches that present men and women in real situations of

confrontation and submission.

Let us move on to the twentieth century when part of the historiography

investigates the period of slavery. Freyre deals with slavery and his work has been the

subject of controversy, focusing on the northeastern sugar economy and family

formation and indicating African protagonism in the national formation. From him

came the idea of “racial democracy,” which eliminates the violent character of slavery.

It should be noted that, during the period in which he writes, racist and Aryanist theories

were strengthening. Freyre focused on the benefits of miscegenation under the cultural

prism, but also highlights its violence:

As to the mistresses being more cruel than the masters in their

treatment of the slaves, that is a fact generally to be observed in slave-

owning societies […] There are tales of sinhá-moças who had the eyes

of pretty mucamas gouged out and then had them served to their

husbands for dessert, in a jelly-dish, floating in blood that was still

fresh. Tales of young baronesses of adult age who out of jealousy or

spite had fifteen-year-old mulato girls sold off to old libertines. […] A

whole series of tortures (FREYRE, 1986, p.351).10

Freyre emphasizes the superiority of the slaves in relation to the colonizer:

Brazil not only took from Africa the topsoil of a black people that was

to fertilize its cane fields and coffee groves, assuage its parched lands,

and round out the wealth afforded by its patches of massapé; there

were to come to it also, from the same source: “mistresses of the

house” for its colonists who were without white women; technicians

for its mines; ironworkers; Negroes versed in cattle-raising and the

9 In the original: “O escravo teve seu papel autonômico na crise terminativa da escravidão. Abaixo da

propaganda multiforme, cuja luz lhe abriu os olhos ao senso íntimo de iniquidade, ele constitui o fator

dominante na obra de redenção de si mesmo. O não quero dos cativos, esse êxodo glorioso da escravaria

paulista, solene, bíblico, divino, como os mais belos episódios dos livros sagrados, foi, para a propriedade

servil, entre dubiedades e tergiversações do Império, o desengano definitivo.” 10 FREYRE, G. The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization.

Translated by Samuel Putnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986.



pasturing of herds; cloth and soap merchants; schoolmasters, priests,

and praying Mohammedans (FREYRE, 1986, p.311).11

Long before Freyre, Alencar had noticed the violence as well as the agency of

the slaves, as he attempted to portray their everyday lives. Though not explicitly quoted

by the sociologist, Alencar is certainly part of a cultural reference that influences the

cultural anthropological vision. It is not possible to formally measure this cultural

dialog. Being a well-known intellectual, Alencar is part of a referential macro-discourse

present in Brazilian formation. This is the way in which the dialogical relation between

them is understood herein. Like Alencar, Freyre turns his attention to the family and the

relationship between master and slave, thereby detailing the day to day of families.

In the 1960s and 1970s, some historians from the University of São Paulo

oppose the Freyrian perspective, criticizing the “racial democracy.” The viewpoint of

these historians is economic rather than cultural. They perceive the enslaved black

within an economic system that reduces it to the condition of merchandise. In this

discourse, the black person appears as res, which indicates a negative ontology. The

account of the economic mode of production that turns the slave into fixed capital

prevails. This line of thought is criticized for not establishing a difference between

economic reification and subjective reification. The following excerpt attests to this lack

of differentiation:

The reification of the slave took place objectively and subjectively.

On the one hand, it became a tool whose social necessity was created

and regulated by the economic mechanism of production. On the other

hand, the slave was self-represented and represented by free men as a

being incapable of autonomic action. In other words, as human being

turned into a thing, the slave presented himself as a person who,

although capable of taking human actions, expressed social

orientations and meanings imposed by the masters through his own

conscience and in his actions. In this sense, the consciousness of the

slave just recorded and passively mirrored the social meanings

imposed upon him (CARDOSO, 1977, p.125).12

11 For reference, see footnote 10. 12 In the original: “A reificação do escravo produzia-se objetiva e subjetivamente. Por um lado, tornava-se

uma peça cuja necessidade social era criada e regulada pelo mecanismo econômico de produção. Por

outro lado, o escravo auto- representava-se e era representado pelos homens livres como um ser incapaz

de ação autonômica. Noutras palavras, o escravo se apresentava, enquanto ser humano tornado coisa,

como alguém que, embora fosse capaz de empreender ações humanas, exprimia, na própria consciência e

nos atos que praticava, orientações e significações sociais impostas pelos senhores. Nesse sentido, a



In the 1980s State University of Campinas, other voices on slavery emerged,

responding to this historiography. This context brings a diversity of accounts on the

enslaved black. These focus on the formation and stability of the enslaved family, the

networks of solidarity among African slaves, abolitionist societies, the constant

struggles for freedom and rights, the escapes from farms, the purchase of letters of

manumission by way of the slaves’ earnings reserves, the murders of slave masters and

guards committed by slaves, which point to individual and collective black resistance.

This viewpoint will be criticized for mitigating violence since it relies on negotiation

theories. The quotations below synthesize this historiography:

The solidarities created through the working life are essential. In the

plantations, there are around 80 to 100 working slaves. With a

sprinkling of communal meals, the working day varies a lot

throughout the year: in the northeastern summer, it lasts between 12

and 14 hours; in winter, 12 hours or slightly less. The sugar plantation

requires very specialized workers such as the sugar purifier

(purgadores) and those responsible for cooking and separating the

sugar in moulds (banqueiros). These black specialists are very well

treated, like the domestic slaves (MATTOSO, 1990, p.134).13

[…]

The slave who really desires his freedom cannot cut the ties. Some

conditions do not depend solely on him. Creole and mestizo slaves set

out for to gain freedom with the huge advantage of having been

generally educated by their masters and of having the opportunity to

learn a profession, while forging affectionate ties with their masters

from childhood (MATTOSO, 1990, pp.171-172).14

[…]

Black or mestizo, African or Creole, Brazil saw the birth of a new

man. We saw him live and survive in his family, community and

work. We saw him dream of freedom (MATTOSO, 1990, p.172).15 16

consciência do escravo apenas registrava e espelhava, passivamente, os significados sociais que lhe eram

impostos.” 13 In the original: “Essenciais são as solidariedades criadas pela vida do trabalho. Nos engenhos labutam

em média 80 a 100 escravos. A jornada de trabalho, pontilhada pelas refeições feitas em comum, varia

muito durante o ano: no verão nordestino, dura entre 12 e 14 horas, no inverno, 12 horas ou pouco menos.

O engenho requer operários muito especializados, como os purgadores e os banqueiros do açúcar. Esses

negros especialistas são bastante bem tratados, como os domésticos.” 14 In the original: “O escravo que deseja realmente sua liberdade não pode desfazer seus vínculos. Certas

condições não dependem absolutamente dele. Os escravos crioulos ou mestiços partem para a conquista

da liberdade com a imensa vantagem de terem sido, em geral, educados pelos senhores, tido a

oportunidade de aprender uma profissão, e desde a infância forjados laços afetivos com os senhores.” 15 In the original: “Negro ou mestiço, africano ou crioulo, é um homem novo o que o Brasil fez nascer.

Nós o vimos viver e sobreviver na sua família, em sua comunidade, em seu trabalho. Nós o vimos sonhar

seu sonho de libertação.”



Historiography carries value judgments and has either a cultural or an economic

point of view. In the nineteenth century, Alencar sustains the idea of the African agency.

Thus, the historiography produced at the State University of Campinas is close to

Alencar’s approach. Bringing to light the discourses of the twentieth century and

comparing them to Alencar’s discourse is justified since the contemporary reader is led

to perceive the discursive set in its greater temporality. Slavery begins in the sixteenth

century and to this day its culture persists. This article mobilizes a small part of this

discussion, beginning in the nineteenth century and moving to the twentieth century in

order to perceive this extensive cultural dialog. Linked to the economic question, the

University of São Paulo discourse clearly dialogs in counterpoint with that of the State

University of Campinas, which is connected to the perspective of cultural history. There,

the dialogism is explicit. But how does the dialogism between these lines of thinking

and Alencar occur? It occurs from the contemporary reading that looks at the theatrical

text in the great temporality, while realizing that the point of view born at the State

University of Campinas already was, in part, present in Alencar. The writer sees the

agency of the slave through his daily life. However, the objectification of the slave

present in the University of São Paulo discourses is also there in view of the

representation of the reification of the slave. The dialogism occurs in the explicit

dialogs between orators, but it can also be perceived by the reader who adapts his own

timespan to read texts from a different chronotopic condition. We, readers of the

twentieth century, perceive this dialog in the extensive temporality which allows us to

see the interaction of the historiographic currents of the twentieth century along with

Alencar. By emphasizing the slave agency within the family, Freyre indirectly revisits

the literary text in which this is constituted. Hence, it is possible to notice the dialog

between Alencar and the historiography of the twentieth century. The voices of the

nineteenth century are still part of the twentieth century, that is, the “everyday ideology”

embodied in the play still resonates both in our daily lives and in our academic contexts.

16 Mattoso (Greece, 1832-2011, Rio de Janeiro) was a researcher from Bahia, whose work is considered a

differentiated landmark about the African slavery in Brazil. She perceived the slave as a “being” and not

as a thing. Regarding the title of this work Ser escravo [Being a Slave], it points to a change in the

discursive perspective in which the resistances, the struggles, the negotiations between masters and slaves

are the stage chosen for the historical interpretation of facts.



Following Vološinov (1986): “The established ideological systems of social ethics,

science, art, and religion are crystallizations of behavioral ideology, and these

crystallizations, in turn, exert a powerful influence” (p.91).17 The perspective of the

Circle is clearly to rely on everyday material culture in dialog with the superstructure.

3 The Voice of Captivity: Joana’s Saga in Alencar’s Play

In Alencar’s work, the black slave does not just appear as a victim, neither is he

portrayed as a hero capable of imposing himself on the system. The writer deals with

the verisimilitude and with situations of adjustments and mismatches in the lives of the

slaves. It is visible that opposing views are present in the later historiography, in that the

slave is either portrayed as a negotiator, who removes violence from the process of

slavery, or is subjected, thus becoming depersonalized. However, historians such as

Flamarion (2002) distance themselves from these dichotomies and approach the

nineteenth-century writer's way of thinking:

On the other hand, I also opposed the historiography that once

characterized some master's degrees produced at Unicamp,

simplistically centered on the notion of “rebel slave,” wanting to

prove, for example, that the Abolition of slavery was a direct

consequence of the escapes, uprisings and other forms of resistance of

the slaves themselves, rather than being a “white business,” as had

been stated before by the Sociological School of São Paulo (Florestan

Fernandes, Octávio Ianni, Fernando Henrique Cardoso). In both cases,

these are unilateral positions, exaggerated, although opposing each

other (MORAES; REGO, 2002, p.221).18

Long before the historians of the 1980s cited here, the playwright deals with the

slave family, the possible negotiations, and the non-objectified slave subject, even under

adverse circumstances. Alencar does not represent the slave devoid of action as does

17 For reference, see footnote 7. 18 In the original: “Por outro lado, eu me colocava também em oposição à historiografia que em certa

época caracterizava alguns mestrados produzidos na Unicamp, centrada de forma simplista na noção de

“escravo rebelde”, querendo provar , por exemplo, que a Abolição da escravidão resultou em forma direta

das fugas, sublevações e outras modalidades de resistências dos próprios escravos, em lugar de ser um

“negócio de brancos” , como havia sido afirmado antes pela Escola Sociológica de São Paulo (Florestan

Fernandes, Octávio Ianni, Fernando Henrique Cardoso). Em ambos os casos, trata-se de posições

unilaterais, exageradas, embora de signo oposto.”



part of the historiography of the 1970s. To continue with the analysis, a summary of the

play is presented.

The drama takes place in 1855 in the city of Rio de Janeiro in the context of

domestic slavery in homes of a modest social class. It is well known that the conditions

of the domestic slave were different from those of the plantations, above all, in a small

and familiar setting where there was a space conducive to the affection of the group.

The slaves of the plantation were numerous and worked outside the domestic

environment, not entering the master’s intimate circle. Their dwelling was the senzala

(slave quarters), and the treatment given to them contained greater violence and

impersonality. The drama consists of the following argument: the slave Joana has a

relationship with Soares, a free man, and becomes pregnant. He buys her, but then dies.

Before his passing, he asks his friend, Dr. Lima, to watch over the slave and his son.

Joana hides the fact that she is Jorge’s mother from him and asks Dr. Lima to do the

same. Although many mestizo individuals were born, there was prejudice against them.

In hiding Jorge’s slave origin, Joana believes she is protecting him from social

exclusion. Dr. Lima welcomes them into his house. Joana manages to attain extra odd

jobs outside Dr. Lima’s residence. With her earnings, she raises Jorge. The condition of

the slaves that earned money working for others outside the homes is well documented.

The money earned was shared with their masters and many slaves saved to buy their

manumission. In the play, Lima and the character Gomes (Jorge’s future father-in-law)

are mid-level civil servants and Jorge teaches music and languages. Joana is

emancipated by Jorge, but she does not accept it, because she fears being away from her

son. This fear was common as many freed slaves fell into a more precarious condition

upon attaining freedom. Jorge falls in love with Eliza. Her father, Gomes, is in debt.

Gomes is in the hands of a loan shark, Peixoto, who threatens to arrest him. Desperate,

Gomes attempts suicide. Jorge asks Dr. Lima for a loan. The moneylender demands

payment. When she realizes that Jorge cannot get the necessary amount, Joana

negotiates with Peixoto in exchange for herself. Jorge is reluctant about the transaction,

but accepts it. In the process of negotiation, Joana takes an active role, since it is she

who persuades Jorge and Peixoto of the negotiation. When Dr. Lima returns, he tells

Jorge that he traded his own mother. Joana poisons herself. Between life and death,

Jorge’s slave origin is revealed. In the preface, Alencar dedicates the play to his mother,



toasting her with the work. Ironically, the play ends with the slave mother, Joana,

sacrificing herself for her son. The central tenet of the play is how motherhood is treated

differently in the context of slavery.

4 The Voice of the Domestic Slave: The Threshold between the Condition as Res

and the Family Integration

Slave labor did not only consist of plantation work. Many slaves also worked in

modest houses. The domestic slave entered the intimacy of the owners’ lives. Their

treatment was different and bonds of affection were established there. Yet they were

still slaves and that limited their agency. This article emphasizes the active role of black

slaves. In this perspective, the historian Reis (2002) opposes the idea of the submissive

slave:

For it is within the paternalistic domination that the slave trade thrives.

It does not point to the “destruction” of the system, but to the opening

of spaces of autonomy within it. There is, of course, the estate

counterpart. The masters who negotiated did it in the name of peace in

the senzala, that is, to avoid a boycott in production. However, it was

precisely because they knew what slaves were capable of that they

accepted bargaining. They were not just victims of a system that

developed absolutely independently of their wills. If so, slavery would

have been a greater horror than it was, and slaves would not have left

the mark of their way of life, of their culture, in a society dominated

by whites (MORAES; REGO, 2002, pp.328-329).19

Though averse to negotiating theories, Gorender (1990) also emphasizes the

difference of the domestic slave: “In passing and without the necessary emphasis, for

reasons that we shall soon see, Gilberto Freyre alluded to the fact that there is a

hierarchy within slavery, in which the domestic slaves constituted their aristocratic part”

19 In the original: “Porque é no interior da dominação paternalista a que a negociação escrava viceja. Ela

não aponta para a ‘destruição’ do sistema, mas para a abertura de espaços de autonomia em seu interior.

Há evidentemente a contrapartida senhorial. Os senhores que negociavam fazem-no em nome da paz na

senzala, fazem-no para evitar boicote à produção. Mas era exatamente porque sabiam do que os escravos

eram capazes que eles aceitavam barganhar. Eles não foram apenas vítimas de um sistema que se

desenvolveu absolutamente independente de suas vontades. Se fosse assim a escravidão teria sido um

horror maior do que foi, e os escravos não teriam deixado a marca de seu modo de vida, de sua cultura,

numa sociedade dominada pelos brancos.”



(p.486).20 Within the limits of her historical condition, Joana is part of this group that

has the power to negotiate. In the following speech, Alencar builds the affective

relationship between master and slave, highlighting the domestic environment, racial

miscegenation and prejudice:

Joana: But Madam is a beautiful lady! And I am her old mulatto

woman! I have been serving master Jorge since he was born, and he

never argued with me! If he doesn’t know how to scold. Look,

Madam. He gives me a beautiful dress for every party. And he would

give more if he weren’t poor.

Elisa: Did you raise him?

Joana: Yes, Madam. My milk was the only one he had!

Joana: He (Soares, Jorge’s father) was so fond of me. He gave all he

had to have me. Two million réis. I went to his house. Then, my

master was born and baptized as his son, without anyone knowing

who his mother was.21

Set in a family environment, the dramatic text allows the dialog to be guided

either by intimacy, making the discursive subjects emerge, or by hierarchy, reinforcing

the distances. Bakhtin (1984)22 highlights the free close contact between individuals and

how, in this setting, the discourse constitutes itself in the concrete clash between

subjects. Instead of professing his abolitionist libel in the tribune, Alencar formalizes

this in the characters who live concrete dramas. The family allows the slave a more

autonomous discursive position.

Joana’s speech attests to the degree of awareness of her place in that

environment. She is either the subject of her action or subjected. The servitude is

expressed in the words. The use of the possessive pronoun “her” preceding her

condition of racial miscegenation in the expression “her old mulatto woman” indicates

the degree of hierarchy between the two, although the dialog takes place in an

20 In the original: “De passagem e sem a necessária ênfase, por motivos que logo veremos, aludiu

Gilberto Freyre ao fato de existir uma hierarquia entre a escravatura, no seio da qual os escravos

domésticos constituíam sua parte aristocrática.” 21 In the original: “Joana: Mas Iaiá é uma moça bonita! E eu sou sua mulata velha! Desde quando nonhô

Jorge nasceu que o sirvo, e nunca brigou comigo! Se ele não sabe ralhar. Olhe, Iaiá. Todas as festas me dá

um vestido bonito. E não dá mais porque é pobre. / Elisa: Foste tu que o criaste? / Foi Iaiá. Nunca mamou

outro leite senão o meu! / Joana: Ele (Soares, pai de Jorge) me queria tanto bem. Deu por mim tudo

quanto tinha. Dois contos de réis. Eu fui para sua casa. Aí meu nhonhô nasceu e foi logo batizado como

filho dele, sem que ninguém soubesse quem era a mãe.” 22 BAKHTIN, M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson.

Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1984.



affectionate tone. Moreover, the expression “He gave all he had to have me” reinforces

the status of object when she refers to her acquisition. However, she emerges as a

precious and differentiated good. This differentiation also occurs in the sentence that

emphasizes the affective value in “He was so fond of me.” The protagonist takes part in

the community parties with her new clothes. However, this action is granted to her from

the outside. Again, her life is at the threshold between freedom and submission. Joana

does not stop being a slave, because as she states, she “serves” and was bought by

means of an economic transaction. However, she is not an object since she talks in the

first person, and is thus endowed with speech and, consequently, consciousness. We

realize in the play, though, that both in this speech and in others the protagonist never

declares herself as Jorge’s mother. She does not utter the word mother when referring to

herself, which demonstrates an awareness that the words refer to things, and that his

secret could be revealed and come to harm the social situation of the child. The

relationship is pendular, because Joana is simultaneously familiar with the environment

of the house and still an object of merchandise. The use of the possessive pronoun “my”

in the last sentence refers to this duality, signaling both to the relation of mercantile

property in which Joana is an object and the loving and intimate relationship. This

double-voiced word represents the duality of the condition of the enslaved class within a

domestic environment that softens slavery. Vološinov (1986) states, that “sign becomes

an arena of the class struggle” (p.23). 23 Freyre also emphasizes the differentiated

treatment given to the domestic slave, authorizing us to establish a dialog between the

sociologist and Alencar, even if indirectly:

The Big House caused to be brought up from the senzala, for the more

intimate and delicate service of the planter and his family, a whole set

of individuals: nurses, house-girls, forster-brothers for the white lads.

These were persons whose place in the family was not that of slaves,

but rather of household inmates. They were a kind of poor relations

after the European model. Many young mullatoes would sit down at

the patriarchal board as if they were indeed part of the family: crias

(those who had been reared in the house), malungos (foster-brothers),

muleques de estimação (favorite houseboys). Some would even go out

in the carriage with their masters, accompanying them on their jaunts

as if they had been their own sons (FREYRE, 1986, p.369).24

23 For reference, see footnote 7. 24 For reference, see footnote 10.



5 The Voice of the Earning Slave: Ideological Sign and Infrastructure

The earning slave was a current reality and this condition allowed the slave a

degree of negotiation. Gorender (1990) mentions this condition:

They oversaw all urban work, above all the transportation of goods

and passengers. They constituted the special category of earning

slaves, which I have often referred to. They spent the day outside

offering their service with the obligation to give their masters a

previously agreed daily or weekly income, keeping the rest of the

earnings (GORENDER, 1990, p.476).25

Many slaves bought their manumission document, proving their agency. The

view of the black slave as an object within the production model is already abundantly

disputed, as Gorender (1990) affirms: “Slaves were present in urban professions.

Carpenters, masons, cobblers, printers, furniture and carriage builders, manufacturers of

military ornaments, lamps, silver objects, jewelers and lithographs” (p.474). 26 This

account contradicts the view of the slave as passive in the mode of slave production. In

the play, this is consubstantial with the following discourse, which demonstrates the

dialog of Alencar with his time:

Dr. Lima: But why did you still need to be a slave? Could you not be

freed?

Joana: Me, Sir? How so?

Dr. Lima: With the money that you earned from your work, and used

for your son’s education.

Joana: I never thought about that, Sir. Furthermore, enfranchisement

could send me away from this house and I would not be near him

anymore. A slave does not say goodbye.27

25 In the original: “Eram eles os encarregados de todos os serviços urbanos, sobretudo do transporte de

mercadorias e passageiros. Constituíam a categoria especial dos negros de ganho, à qual me referi várias

vezes. Passavam o dia na rua alugando seus serviços com a obrigação de entregar ao senhor uma renda

diária ou semanal previamente fixada, pertencendo-lhes o que sobrasse.” 26 In the original: “Os escravos faziam-se presentes em ofícios urbanos. Carpinteiros, pedreiros,

calceteiros, impressores, construtores de móveis e carruagens, fabricantes de ornamentos militares, de

lampiões, artífices de objetos de prata, joalheiros e litógrafos.” 27 In the original: “Dr. Lima: Mas que necessidade tinhas de ser escrava ainda? Não podias estar forra?

Joana: Eu, meu Senhor? Como? / Dr. Lima: Com o dinheiro que tiravas do teu trabalho, e gastavas na

educação do teu filho. / Joana: Nunca pensei nisso meu Senhor. Demais, forra poderiam me deitar fora de

casa.e eu não estaria mais junto dele. A escrava não se despede.”



The protagonist is aware of her precarious condition of enfranchisement. There

was a lack of employment for everyone, since the main economy was that of plantations,

leaving few jobs for the freed slaves in urbanized areas. Once released, the slaves

needed to survive on their own. Joana alludes to this situation in her speech. Moreover,

the maternal bond with Jorge prevented her from wanting freedom, since it would

distance her from her son. It should be noted that in Joana’s speech there is a duality in

the treatment she gives herself, because it either emits a positioning in the first person

singular, or she sees herself as a transactional object. She refers to herself as a slave

who does not “say goodbye,” which refers to the economic system to which she is

subjected. There, she appears as a depersonalized object. However, captivity can assure

that she will be in her son’s company. By saying this, Joana indicates a degree of

awareness about the condition of the emancipated slaves. This discursive duality is

recurrent in Alencar’s play since the protagonist is aware of her class condition,

perceiving the advantages and disadvantages of freedom in an inhospitable environment

for those who are emancipated. Joana’s speech is ambiguous, as was the condition of

most slaves, because they had agency within certain limits. The slave is either utterly

ignorant of the purchase of manumission, even if he has the means for such an action, or

mobilizes an economic reasoning in which the slave cannot be dismissed, since he is an

object and not a formally free worker. There are numerous documented accounts that

prove the marginalization of the slaves after their emancipation. Certainly, Alencar was

not oblivious to this and, in the play, he covers this reality, establishing a dialogy with

his time. Joana’s voice points to the imbalance between infrastructure and

superstructure, a subject dear to the Marxist universe. Her voice comes from the base,

that is, she recognizes that the alteration of the infrastructure (transition from slave to

freed person) by obtaining manumission can be beneficial, but this freedom does not

guarantee inclusion, because the superstructure does not change in one movement. The

word attests to the contradiction between infrastructure and superstructure. The former

confronts the latter due to the factor of racial prejudice. Taking a step away from

Stalinist schematic Marxism, which was based on economic determinism, Vološinov

(1986) attests this fact: “The category of mechanical causality in explanations of



ideological phenomena can most easily be surmounted on the grounds of philosophy of

language” (p.24).28

6 The Voice of Prejudice against the Mulatto: The Dialog with Eugenic Theories

From the nineteenth century, Brazilian society strengthened its economy through

the monoculture of coffee, which became a large-scale export production, employing,

above all, slave labor.29 The slave economy generates a slave culture. Until today, this

slave culture persists, although the slave production mode has disappeared. As already

mentioned, the superstructure universe of the culture shifts from the economic level. At

the time of the play, this problem was more accentuated and, as a result, children of

slave mothers were discriminated against, even with free status. At the time, eugenic

discourses promoted a heated debate between monogenists and polygenists,

strengthening whitening and racial degeneration theories. Schwartz (1993) deals with

this context. The debate mainly takes place in Schools of Medicine and Law, but it is

also part of the “behavioral ideology” to which everyone had access, including slaves.

They were discursive positions that credited the national backwardness of the

miscegenation, being also debated outside the academy, in the “behavioral ideology”

from which Alencar also participates. This is the case of the character Jorge who cannot

know of his slave origin, because he would be discriminated against. At the end of the

play, Elisa’s father discriminates against Jorge because of his black genealogy, which

demonstrates that Alencar dialogs with the eugenic discourses of the time:

Gomes: This marriage is no longer possible.

Gomes: Mr. Jorge, I like you, but…

Jorge: You are right Mr. Gomes, you judge me unworthy of belonging

to your family because I am the son of the woman who sold herself to

save this same honor in the name of which you repel me.30

28 For reference, see footnote 7. 29 Regarding the exogeny of the Brazilian economy, see a classic on the subject in Prado Junior (2006). 30 In the original: “Gomes: Esse casamento não é mais possível. / Gomes: Sr. Jorge, eu o estimo, porém...

/ Jorge: Tem razão Sr. Gomes, O Sr. me julga indigno de pertencer a sua família porque eu sou filho

daquela que se vendeu para salvar essa mesma honra em nome da qual me repele.”



It is noticeable that Gomes’s character does not mention the slavery status, but

uses an ambiguous speech, marked by reticence, implying that the slave condition is an

impediment to marriage. Prejudice is visible, but it cannot be pronounced. Words are

avoided, but context clarifies what is silenced. Jorge does not mention Joana’s slave

condition either, but emphasizes the moral aspect of the protagonist, exposing the

pettiness of Gomes by demonstrating that Joana, although a slave, saved him from

dishonor. Joana’s work also refers to the generic condition of class, because it reveals

how the labor of the enslaved supported the masters. They are the voices of the time in

the speeches of the characters.

7 The Slave Traders’ Voice: Mercantile Discourse and the Emergence of the

Subject

The activity of the black slave is herein emphasized, but this activity

encountered limits imposed by the system, since slaves remained someone else’s

property, that is, a fixed capital. However, there are gaps and resistance. The play deals

with this contradictory movement when Joana is pawned to pay off Jorge’s debt. The

money lender Peixoto sees Joana as a commodity, inspecting her body to obtain the

quality of the product. The voice that is revealed there represents the daily life of the

slave markets seen as objects of economic transaction. Joana becomes known as a

commodity and exposes herself by describing her qualities. However, the object of the

transaction becomes a subject when referring to herself. It should be noted that at the

same time Joana is a subject, provided with a voice, and an object, the target of the

objective description of this same voice:

Joana: Yes, there is, Sir! This slave. How much do you think she is

worth?

Peixoto: I will pay three hundred thousand réis.

Jorge: What? Wasn’t she guaranteed for six hundred thousand réis

that I have just paid today?

Peixoto: That was before! She is old now.

Joana: Me, old? I have barely thirty-seven years of age! […] I know

very well how to comb and dress a lady. Better than many a famous

maid. […] But I also know how to sew, wash, iron. I sweep floors,

organize everything, cook, set the table. And I still make time to do

my own stitching. Ask my master.

Jorge: During the period that this… Joana will be in your house.



Peixoto: Who is my slave, you mean.

Jorge: I ask you to treat her kindly. She is used to living with me,

more like a companion than…

Peixoto: Save yourself from asking me that. I am a good master.

Peixoto: Well, good. Let us close the deal. Come here, black lady. Let

me see your feet.

Joana: You are suspicious of me. I don’t have a disease… If I have

never had a headache to this day, thank God.

Joana: No one has ever treated me like this!

Peixoto: Come on, show me your teeth.

Joana: All healthy.

Jorge: Sir, stop that. I cannot see this anymore.

Peixoto: The one who gives his money, Mr. Jorge, must know what he

is buying. If you don’t like it… 31

The speeches present a complex negotiation in which the slave presents herself

as a commodity, subverting the order, since from inanimate and mute object, she

becomes a subject. The situation is formalized through a technical expedient of

carnivalization as the roles are reversed, because the slave advertises herself as a

tradable object. The term “carnivalization” is taken from Bakhtin (1984)32 whose work

deals with the human body and how it is represented in a multifaceted way through the

lenses of popular culture and the arts. In popular culture, as well as in a certain kind of

literature, the body appears in its totality, dialogically congregating the opposites.

However, from the Modern Age, the body is fragmented. With the advent of industrial

labor, the body of the working class is now reduced to its factory productive function.

Bakhtin (1984)33 dealswith the labor world associated with the feast and the body as a

totality in popular culture, which is different from what occurs in bourgeois society. In

the slave regime, this condition will intensify. Joana represents this reductionism, but

31 In the original: “Joana: Tem sim, meu Senhor! Tem esta escrava. Quanto acha V. m que ela vale? /

Peixoto: Dou sobre ela trezentos mil réis. / Jorge: Como? Não estava hipotecada por seiscentos mil réis

que acabei de pagar hoje? / Peixoto: Foi em outro tempo! Já está velha. / Joana: Eu velha? Mal tenho

trinta e sete anos! [...] Sei pentear e vestir uma moça que faz gosto. Melhor do que muita mucama de

fama. [...] Mas sei também coser, lavar, engomar. Varro, arrumo tudo, cozinho, ponho a mesa. E ainda me

fica tempo para fazer as minhas costuras. Pergunte a Nhonhô. / Jorge: Durante o período que esta... Joana

vai estar em sua casa. / Peixoto: Que é minha escrava quer o Sr dizer. / Jorge: Peço-lhe que a trate com

doçura. Está habituada a viver comigo, mais como uma companheira do que... / Peixoto: Excusa pedir-me

isso. Sou um bom senhor. / Peixoto: Ora, bem. Fechemos o negócio. Vem cá mulata. Deixa lá ver os pés.

/ Joana: O senhor está desconfiado comigo. Eu não tenho doença... Se nunca senti me doer a cabeça, até

hoje, graças a Deus. / Joana: Ninguém ainda me tratou assim! / Peixoto: Anda lá, mostra os dentes. /

Joana: Todos sãos. / Jorge: Senhor, acabe com isso. Não posso mais ver essa cena. / Peixoto: Quem dá o

seu dinheiro, Sr. Jorge, deve saber o que compra. Se não lhe agrada...” 32 BAKHTIN, M. Rabelais and his World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1984. 33 For reference, see footnote 32.



also reverses it, thus dethroning it. It presents a public body that is for sale as res, which

is the generalization of a class, and a private body, endowed with a unique position and

voice. These two dimensions are in dialog and in confrontation through her voice,

which consists of several social voices of both resistance and submission. Object and

subject, body and ideological consciousness, are confronted and clarified by the speech

of the protagonist. The slave owner is reluctant to negotiate, and the slave is the

protagonist of the purchasing process, which indicates autonomy. However, in this

negotiation, the crudeness of the process of commodification of Joana’s body is exposed.

It is noticeable that in the negotiation Joana refers to herself in the third person singular,

distancing from herself in order to comment on her qualities as a saleable object.

However, because she is active, she goes back to using the first person singular,

resuming her autonomous position. Jorge, too, becomes ambivalent, for in referring to

Joana, he either treats her as a person he knows, or he does not define her as a slave.

Jorge avoids defining her as slave when referring to Joana. Yet, the buyer presents an

economic and mercantilist bias, targeting the profit of the transaction. To do so, he

disqualifies Joana, classifying her as “old.” He is also guided by usury by lowering the

price of transaction when he sees that the situation of the family guarantees such

negotiation. He treats her as a thing, calling her a slave or a mulatto. He does not utter

her name, but defines her through the legal and racial prism, thereby mobilizing the

economic field and the eugenics present in the nineteenth century society. However,

Alencar represents him as a good owner, that is, one who treats the product in a less

objectified way. In the speech of the merchant, the word “good master” refers to a

humanitarian situation, within the limits of subservience, which is not economic,

personalized. It magnifies the master to the detriment of the merchant. The speech also

demonstrates ambiguity, because within slavery’s legal system, less inhuman words

emerge. On the other hand, the body inspection reduces Joana to the level of an object.

This speech reveals the ambivalent relations that permeated the slave-owner

relationship. The very economic system required careful treatment of the slave in order

not to lose the capital invested, as attested by much of the national historiography.

Alencar dialogs with his time also by harboring this mercantilist bias. Again, the

tensions between infrastructure and superstructure (the symbolic level) are given by

language, moving away from Stalinist Marxism.



8 The Voice of the Integrated and the Slavery Apologist Alencar

The voice of the character Vicente Romão is emphasized herein as he represents

many marginalized people that integrate the culture of the elite when entering the

universe of labor, hence reaching a hierarchical place. Of gypsy origin, he meets Joana

when he was Jorge’s manservant. The dialog between him and Joana spans a whole

scene. He climbed socially and became a bailiff. Vicente discourages Joana from calling

him by his nickname, Bilro, in order to hide his humble origins and also his friendship

with a slave. Joana defies his request and does not treat him formally. Alencar makes

the necessary adjustments to the scene to guarantee that a superior caste is kept in a

society divided into social classes. Drawing on Bakhtin (1984),34 it is possible to see the

discursive diversity given either in the familiar zone that brings individuals together, or

in the external hierarchical context, which requires the use of a ceremonial and official

tone in the enunciative exchanges. It is also important to emphasize that class mobility

locates Bilro’s speech at the threshold between his humble past and the reality in which

he is a professional bailiff who demands a discursive treatment that brings him closer to

the elite and guarantees a hierarchy between him and Joana. As a counterpoint,

Alencar’s voice in political texts, present in such work as New Letters of Erasmo,

demonstrates that the writer defends slavery. Alencar’s voice follows an economic basis

that defended the permanence of the slave since there were not enough workers to

maintain agricultural and export production. The abolition of slavery would incur an

economic deficit that the country could not bear. Alencar finds himself split between

antagonistic positions and chooses to present his antislavery libel only in theater,

relying on cultural awareness in the long term. This ambiguity of his thinking can be

understood as the result of a time of conflicting voices. It also offers a class discourse

because he belongs to the cultural and economic elite, and his voice has boundaries

circumscribed therein. Every voice brings an axiological position and the intellectual of

the Conservative Party is placed in a slavery context and operates in this scenario.

Vološinov (1986) deals with this question from a class viewpoint: “The generation of

language cannot be studied, of course, in complete disregard of the most solid kind of

34 Fore reference, see footnote 22.



social existence refracted in it and of the refracting powers of the socioeconomic

conditions” (p.158).35

9 The Author’s Voice in the Play’s Preface

In the preface, Alencar dedicates the play to his mother. White motherhood is a

reason for joy. However, it brings the theme of slave motherhood to the scene in the

face of slavery. In real life, the slave mother must become invisible, but the play

pedagogically shows this condition. Joana represents the very slave condition of men

and women transplanted from their nations in order to do forced labor. The play testifies

to the mestizo condition of the Empire by focusing on slave motherhood as a national

genesis. The country arises from the miscegenation seen in the character of Jorge,

whose existence is the result of it. In the following part of the play taken from the

epilogue, the drama of recognition ends on the threshold of death. Speech at the

threshold bares the intimate condition of the mestizo households, referring to the

domestic slaves, but which can be generalized to the economic situation of the slave of

the plantations. In Bakhtin’s (1984)36 work, the threshold is the founding element of his

epistemology, as he rejects the dichotomy of antithetical pairs. It is a situation of fraught

limits, of duplicity in which life and death, the secret and the revelation, the outside and

the inside, the dream and the vigil, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the

behavioral ideology and crystallized ideologies, reflection and refraction, the subject

and the other confront each other, thus provoking enlightenment. In the play, it is in the

dialog at the threshold that the dialogical revelation of truth occurs, as a result of

confrontation between the characters. The problem of truth reminds us of Bakhtin who

is as far removed from relativism as from metaphysics. For him, the truth manifests

itself in a dialogical way, in the confrontation, and is unstable. He refers to the Socratic

perspective that starts from truth born in dialog, in which the hierarchies of authoritarian

thinking dissipate (BAKHTIN, 1984). 37 In the play, the dialog on the threshold

elucidates the dramatic situation that has been conforming, reaching the climax,

stripping slave motherhood.

35 For reference, see footnote 7. 36 For reference, see footnote 22. 37 For reference, see footnote 22.



Jorge: Call me your son. I beg you.

Joana: But no… and no… I swear!

Dr. Lima: Joana, God is listening!

Joana: For God’s sake… He knows why I say this! For God, I swear

that… Ah…

Joana: He is mistaken. I am not… I am not your mother, no… my son!

She dies.

Jorge: My mother!38

The reader realizes that the dramatic situation of the protagonist prevents her

from confessing that she is Jorge’s mother, as she avoids uttering the word mother to

refer to herself. However, even when she uses the verbal construction to deny

motherhood, repeating the word “no” several times, Joana is betrayed by the words as

she pronounces the word “son” plus the possessive adjective. The word “mother,”

which refers to Joana, occurs only in Jorge’s voice and at a different moment in Dr.

Lima’s speech. The title of the play, Mãe, refers to Joana and transcends the universe of

the drama experienced by the characters, because the playwright formalizes it as he

presents an outside position in relation to the staged universe. He provides an end to the

drama where he explains to the audience the condition of slave motherhood. Alencar is

the one who organizes the speeches of the play dialogically, that is, immersed in fact

and character, but also distanced from them. He talks to them and about them. Alencar

formalizes his vision of the world presenting the enslaved African as the matrix that

generates mestizo life. Joana represents the many enslaved Joanas that constituted

Brazil. The term outsideness is taken from Bakhtin (1990),39 who understands it as an

ontological factor since the distance between oneself and the other is an indispensable

condition of existence. This detachment must be perceived though a dialogical

perspective, that is, in permanent interaction with the other. Alencar gives his characters

their own lives and distances himself from them. However, they come into existence

from his pen, but he does not merge with them. The writer also emerges in a dialogical

attitude with his time because, in the organization of his text, the voices of his time

appear conformed in the characters’ speeches.

38 In the original: “Jorge: Chama-me teu filho. Eu te suplico. / Joana: Mas não... e não... Eu juro! / Dr.

Lima: Joana, Deus nos ouve! / Joana: Por Deus mesmo... Ele sabe porque digo isso! Por Deus mesmo

juro que... Ah... / Joana: Ele se enganou. Eu não...Eu não sou tua mãe, não... meu filho! Morre. / Jorge:

Minha mãe!” 39 For reference, see footnote 4.



Final Considerations

According to the Bakhtinian perspective, every discourse is part of a great social

orchestra of voices that converge or diverge, faced with the objects on which concrete

women and men stand, demonstrating axiological positions. In the play Mãe, Alencar

enters the discursive field of slavery and formalizes a certain discourse that dialogs with

everyday national voices present in the newspapers, the parliament, the street, the slave

quarters, the quilombos, the abolitionist and slavery apologist writings. In this dialogical

attitude, which is the basis of every discourse, he expresses his view of captivity from

the dramatic situation of an enslaved mother who, as we have seen, is subjected to the

degradation of the slave condition, but as a human being she manifests her existence by

means of a unique voice at the same time as being an expression of a particular, yet also

generic situation, since she refers to the class condition that encompasses other Joanas.

Through the voice of the characters, the social voice of the earning slaves, the domestic

slaves, the slave merchants, racial prejudice, and the mixed-race Brazil resonate, which

have been registered in history books, films, national imagery, in everyday

conversations, soap operas, etc. Alencar includes in the play the drama of the enslaved,

giving him a voice that empowers him as agent of his destiny, although subjected to

degrading conditions. In the audience, there are both abolitionists and slavery apologists.

The recourse to theater as a means of political and ethical awareness is the great

achievement of an engaged work that resists what is found in life, proving that literary

discourse “reflects reality and refracts it,” while trying to modify it.

The historiography of the twentieth century also depicts the slave from different

perspectives, either transformed into an object or as an active agent of the process. As

we read Alencar, it is possible to perceive the freshness of his work, seeing that in the

twentieth century an academic discourse emerges: that of the State University of

Campinas, which is very similar to what had already been verbalized in the literary

voice of the writer from the state of Ceará. Readers perceive Alencar’s work in this

extensive dialogism to which we have alluded. The perspective of the play, betting on

the agency of the enslaved, is also of a strand of the UNICAMP’s historiography, which

was produced more than a century later than that of Alencar. The theme and reality of

slavery are revisited and earlier discourses are mobilized. This mobilization does not



have to be explicit, such as looking for references to the play Mãe. However, this dialog

between diverse chronotopes can be established later. Moreover, Cultural History has

relied on literary texts to build its place of interlocution. In the great temporality of the

life of a work, it is possible to follow Bakhtin in Response to a Question from the Novy

Mir Editorial Staff: “Enclosure within the epoch also makes it impossible to understand

the work’s future life in subsequent centuries; this life appears as a kind of paradox.

Works break through the boundaries of their own time, they live in centuries, that is, in

great time” (1986, p.4; emphasis in original).40

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texto/bi000161.pdf. Acesso em: 16/11/2014.

ALENCAR, J. Novas cartas de Erasmo. Disponível em: http://www.academia.org.br/

abl/media/Carta de Erasmo ao Imperador-Jose de Alencar.pdf. Acesso em: 29/05/2018.

ASSIS, M. Notícia da atual literatura brasileira: instinto de nacionalidade. Disponível

em: http://machado.mec.gov.br/obra-completa-lista/item/download/95_a034209a67594

696a9b556534ff73116. Acesso em: 10/11/2010.

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Janeiro: Ed. Forense-Universitária, 1981.

BAKHTIN, M. (VOLOCHINOV). Marxismo e filosofia da linguagem. Problemas

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Yara Frateschi Vieira. São Paulo: Hucitec, 1986.

BAKHTIN, M. A cultura popular na Idade Média e no Renascimento: o contexto de

François Rabelais. Trad. Yara F. Vieira. São Paulo: Hucitec, 1987.

BAKHTIN, M. O autor e o herói. In: BAKHTIN, M. Estética da criação verbal. Trad.

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40 For reference, see footnote 8.



MATTOSO, K. Ser escravo no Brasil. 2. ed. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1990.

MORAES J.; REGO, J. Conversas com historiadores brasileiros. São Paulo: Editora 34,

2002.

PRADO JUNIOR, C. História econômica do Brasil. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2006.

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Statement of authorship and responsibility for published content

We declare that all of the authors had access to the research corpus, participated

actively in the discussion of the results, and conducted the review and approval process

of the paper’s final version.

Translated by Patrick William Bushell – [email protected]

Received March 27,2018

Accepted May 24,2019

mailto:[email protected]

Documents

José de Alencar’s Drama Mãe and the African-Brazilian ... · Mãe, de José de Alencar, que tem por cenário o Rio de Janeiro da segunda metade do séc. XIX, retratando a escravidão